Intergenerational
relations
Demographic change, increases in life expectancy
and new economic opportunities are changing people’s expectations
and relations between generations.
Surveys of women of reproductive age show a
steady decrease in desired family size, due in part to better access
to and knowledge about contraception, as well as to education and
higher infant survival rates.
Increasingly, parents will have fewer children
to support them in old age, but parents increasingly do not expect
that their children will support them, at least financially. A variety
of forms of support for the elderly will become more important as
people live longer and more independently. More families will have
both older and younger dependants. Women provide most care to elderly
family members, but this support is eroding as more daughters and
daughters-in-law are going out to work.
In developing countries, over 69 per cent of
older persons live in a household with family members, though co-residence
and multigenerational families are less common in developed countries.
As incomes increase, elderly people begin to express preferences
for greater independence. Longstanding traditions of old-age support
weaken, relationships between adult children and their parents become
increasingly diverse, and expectations of public sector assistance
grow as societies develop.
Widows over 60 greatly outnumber widowers —
by as many as five to one in some countries — because women
live longer than men and widowed men are more likely to remarry.
A woman who survives her husband and has no married sons may be
left with little support in old age, as she may have limited access
to pension and property rights or accumulated wealth from the marriage.
Older populations, particularly those over
80, are predominantly female. In developed countries by 2050, 10
per cent of all women will be over 80, many of them widows. Older
women are more likely than men to be poor or illiterate. Discrimination,
restrictions on their freedom of mobility and association, and their
lack of financial and legal experience often makes them vulnerable
to exploitation.
Deliberate abuse or neglect of older family
members needs to be recognized as a public health and human rights
concern. A growing number of countries are strengthening both laws
on family responsibility for elderly care and regulations on institutional
service quality.
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